Category: Facebook & Twitter

Selections of Status Updates, Notes, Comments and Tweets made since 2009, a year which coincided with the gradual discovery by Arab and Middle Eastern activists of the potential of Facebook and Twitter as tools for social and political activism.

Syria and the perils of proxy war

Syria and the perils of proxy war – latimes.com.

Reducing the current proxy-war situation in Syria to a Saudi-Iranian competition over regional hegemony is a gross oversimplification and overlooks serious involvement by other actors, including Turkey, Qatar, Israel, U.S., France, the U.K. and Russia, to name but the most visible operators.  There is much at stake in Syria for many different powers around the world. The Saudi-Iranian proxy-war could not unfold without support, or lack thereof, from these other players.

Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S.

Syria Militants Said to Recruit Visiting Americans to Attack U.S. – NYTimes.com.

And here we go again: Building up a case for drone strikes, and for going back to doing business with Assad. I am not implying that the reports are false. On the contrary they are as true as those reports of Assad’s complicity in the chemical weapons attack and all the massacres perpetrated by his loyalist militias from the onset of this genocide to this very moment. But issuing an order for a drone attack is much easier for this administration than committing to a policy that can make a real difference on the ground. It creates the impression of doing something, while your main focus is to actually avoid entanglement. I am yet to hear a cogent argument showing how one can actually make a difference on the ground without being “entangled,” at least for a certain period of time, and for all the headaches that come with entanglement. Drone strikes against “certain rebels” while avoiding strikes against the Assad regime, even after they crossed all red lines, the one drawn by Obama and those delineated by international law, will only serve to make matters worse in Syria. Rebels are doing their best to combat extremists with no support from the U.S. But Assad has to go in order to really curtail spread of violence beyond borders of the country and the region.

Syria Called Eager to Be Rid of Chemical Arms

Syria Called Eager to Be Rid of Chemical Arms – NYTimes.com.

But of course, the Assads have always been eager to please… the United States and the international community. In exchange, they only demand the right to repress and massacre their own people. Is that too much to ask? Judging by current global reactions, it doesn’t seem to be. Meanwhile, international officials press on with their campaign to rehabilitate the Assad regime, even as it remains committed to its genocidal venture.

The Massacre in Syria That Wasn’t

The Massacre in Syria That Wasn’t | The Interpreter.

Muddying the waters was the Assad regime tactic of choice from the very onset of the revolution, a trick Assad’s security apparatuses learned from their KGB and Stazi mentors. So, they lied from the beginning, they spoke about infiltrators and terrorists in order to justify their uber-violent crackdown that soon mushroomed into a full-fledged genocide. At first, only those segments of Syrian society already predisposed to fearing change, that is, the country’s confessional minorities and certain segments of the Sunni community that have long thrown their lot with the Assad regime, were willing to embrace the “salvific” lies.

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